While giving a webinar on DevOps with Visual Studio Team Services, I was asked if you could build VB6 applications. My response was simple. Visual Studio Team Services can be used to build any language, targeting any platform. That is true but I wanted to prove it. So in this post I will show you how to build a VB6 application using Visual Studio Team Services. The information here should help you build any language, targeting any platform, with Visual Studio Team Services.

The first thing you will have to do is create a private agent. Visual Studio Team Services provides hosted build agents running in Azure. However, VB6 is not installed on those machines. Therefore, to build VB6 applications you are going to have to create a machine that has VB6 and the Visual Studio Team Services build agent on it. Whenever I create a build machine I start with a Azure VM using the latest Visual Studio Community template. As of this writing, that was Visual Studio Community 2015 Update 2 with Universal Windows Tools and Azure SDK 2.9 on Windows Server 2012 R2.

Once the machine is provisioned and running in Azure RDP to the machine so we can start installing VB6 and the build agent. Installing VB6 on Windows Server 2012 R2 is an involved process which I will detail now.

This is where things get interesting. This installation will eventually hang updating the system.

Once you reach this point, kill the installation and restart your machine. Once your machine restarts:

Right-click the ISO and select Mount

Right-click on setup.exe

Select Run as administrator

Click Run the program without getting help

Click Next

Select I accept the agreement

Click Next

Enter your product ID (download from MSDN)

Click Next

Click Next

Click Run the program without getting help

Click Continue

Click OK

Click Custom

Uncheck Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 6.0

Select Data Access

Click Change Options

Uncheck everything except Data Environment

Click OK

Click Continue This time the installation should complete as expected.

Click Restart Windows

Now we need to install Service Pack 6.

Right-click on vb6sp6b.exe

Select Properties

Click Unblock

Click OK

Right-click on vb6sp6b.exe

Select Run as administrator

Enter C:\Users\{user}\Downloads\temp

Click OK

Click Yes

Right-click setupsp6.exe from the C:\Users\{user}\Downloads\temp folder

Select Properties

Click the Compatibility tab

Check the Run this program in compatibility mode for: checkbox

Select Windows XP (Service Pack 3)

Click Apply

Click OK

Right-click on setupsp6.exe

Select Run as administrator

Click Continue

Click I Agree The installation should complete as expected.

The final step for VB6 is to make sure the installation folder is in the path and VB6 is registered as a capability.

Open Windows Explorer

Right-click the PC node

Select Properties

Click the Advanced system settings link

Click the Environment Variables button

Double-click Path in the System variables list

Append ;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98

Click OK

Click New…

Field

Value

Variable name

VB6

Variable value

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98

Click OK

Click OK

Click OK

To test our installation we will create a “Hello World” program.

Press the Windows key

Type CMD

Press Enter

Type vb6

Press Enter If Visual Basic does not start, repeat the setup to add the installation folder to the path and restart the command window.

Select Standard EXE

Click Open

Change form caption to Hello World!

From File menu, select Save Project

Create a folder and save your project

Close Visual Basic

We need to check this project into Visual Studio Team Services. I am going to explain how to use Team Foundation Source Control. If you prefer, you can use Git. I am just assuming if you are using VB6 you might not have made the move to Git just yet.

Log into Visual Studio Team Services

Click New

Field

Value

Project name

{anything you like}

Description

{anything you like}

Process template

{anything you like}

Version Control

Team Foundation Version Control

Click Create project

Click Navigate to project

Click Add Code

With our team project and Team Foundation Version Control repository created, we can add our code to Visual Studio Team Services.

Start Visual Studio 2015

Click Team Explorer tab

Click Manage Connections

Click Connect to Team Project

Select your server, collection, and project

Click Connect

Click Configure your workspace

Click Map & Get

Open Source Control Explorer

Copy your Hello World project into the mapped folder

Click the Add Items to Folder

Select the folder for your project

Click Finish

Right-click the new folder

Select Check In Pending Changes

Click Check In

With Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise installed and our project in Visual Studio Team Services, we can now install the build agent.

Return to Visual Studio Team Services

Click the Manage project gear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen

Click your account name

Click Agent queues tab

Click Download agent

Save the file to your Downloads folder

Right-click agent.zip

Select Properties

Ensure the file is unblocked

Click OK

With the zip downloaded, we can use it to stamp out agents.

Right-click agent.zip

Select Extract All

Enter c:\a1

Click Extract

I number my folders because you can have multiple agents installed on a single machine. I tend to install one agent per core.

Press the Windows key

Type CMD

Right-click Command Prompt

Select Run as administrator

Navigate to the folder where you extracted the file contents

Run ConfigureAgent.cmd You can either use the default name or have the name match the folder name, which in my case is “a1”